Leading Questions with Matt Longley – Mobsta

Leading Questions

Mobsta CEO Matt Longley is in the hot seat for our probing, quick-fire Leading Questions.

Matt Longley has spent his career taking sideways steps, from studying archaeology and searching bags for Customs and Excise to government marketing, agencies and, eventually, the top job at adtech business Mobsta.

A member of The Media Leader’s Future 100 Club, Longley believes leaders should stop pretending they know where they’ll be in five years. Instead, he steers by “the horizon”, a direction of travel you never quite reach but that keeps the business moving.

Here, he explains why he would be worried if he were always the one with the best ideas, how AI is shrinking the gap between “what if?” and a live test, and why an armoured bear makes the case for curiosity.

Leadership

What principles guide your leadership approach?

I think my job is to give people a clear sense of direction, remove the barriers that get in their way and then give them enough space to surprise me.

I talk a lot internally about the idea of the horizon. You can sail towards the horizon, but you’re never actually going to reach it. It’s the journey. You’ll learn, unlearn, discover, grow, and, hopefully, flourish, along the way. And the journey always leads to new developments, innovations and surprises. 

That’s how I think about running a business. You need a direction and you obviously need targets, but I don’t think pretending you know exactly where you’ll be in five years is particularly useful anymore.

The other principle is to keep asking “what if?”. Pretty much every meaningful change we’ve made at Mobsta has started with somebody questioning why we do something the way we do. I want people to feel they can bring me an idea that sounds slightly wild and we’ll try it, rather than spend six months writing a paper about why it might or might not work.

How do you define success as a leader in today’s media landscape?

Of course there are the obvious measures of success in any business: are we growing, are we doing so responsibly, are we profitable, are clients happy and returning for more, are people doing good work? Those things matter enormously, but I’ve never found them particularly inspiring as an end goal.

For me, success is building a business that keeps moving. If we were still doing what we were doing a year ago, let alone five years ago, we’d be in trouble. The media industry is changing far too quickly for standing still to be an option.

I’d also judge myself on whether the people around me are developing. I don’t think my job as CEO is to have all the answers. In fact, I’d be pretty worried if I was always the person coming up with the best ideas. And I’m certainly not an expert. If I’ve built a team that challenges me, comes up with ideas I wouldn’t have thought of and has the confidence to run with them, I think I’m doing something right.

How do you personally stay ahead of industry disruption?

I spend much more time now trying to see around corners.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve realised one of the most useful things I can do as CEO is step away from what’s immediately in front of us and look for patterns elsewhere. If a client comes to us with a problem, we’re often already too late, because that problem has usually been developing for months or years.

So I’m interested in what’s happening outside advertising as much as inside it: technology, consumer behaviour, geopolitics, regulation, how people are interacting with devices and the world. Then I ask what those things might mean for our industry two, three or five years from now.

I obviously get some of that wrong. That’s fine. I’d much rather explore ten ideas and discover nine of them don’t work than wait until the answer is obvious to everybody and then too late. 

People and Culture

How do you inspire your teams when uncertainty is the norm?

I don’t think uncertainty is something you can manage away anymore. I’m actually not a massive fan of the phrase ‘change management’, because it suggests change is a project with a beginning and an end. In our industry, there isn’t really an end.

So rather than trying to make people comfortable by pretending everything will eventually settle down, I think you have to make change feel like a normal part of working somewhere. Give people a direction, be honest about what you don’t know and make it okay to try something that might not work.

AI has amplified that. There is rarely a single truth or a simple way of doing things anymore. We’re operating in a much more complex, multifaceted environment, with more information, more possibilities and more noise.

Part of my job is to be comfortable sitting amongst that complexity and to help people see through it.

That’s where the idea of the horizon comes in for me. You don’t need to know exactly where you’ll end up to know which direction you’re travelling. The horizon gives you something to move towards while still leaving room to change course, explore and respond to what you find along the way.

We might not know exactly which port we’ll end up in, but there is beauty and adventure in the sailing. I think people become much more comfortable with uncertainty when there is calm in the direction of travel, and when they know they can have a say in how we get there.

What’s your approach to developing future leaders within your organisation?

Early in my career, a manager asked me in my second week what I wanted to do next. I remember thinking it was a slightly strange question because I’d only just arrived. But when I eventually told her about another role I was interested in, she helped me prepare for the interview even though it meant I might leave her team. That has stayed with me.

I don’t think developing people means working out how to keep them in the same box for as long as possible. If someone wants to evolve or progress, I want to help them do that.

My approach is to give people responsibility, let them test themselves and be there when they need support. I want people to feel they’re progressing while they’re here, taking on new challenges and doing things they might not have thought they were ready for.

How do you handle failure, both personally and within your teams?

I’d be very suspicious of anyone – person or business – if they say they innovate but never fail.

We try to get from idea to test very quickly. Sometimes we’ll have a conversation, somebody will say “what if we did this?”, and within a couple of weeks we can have enough evidence to know whether there’s something in it. Quite often there isn’t. That’s not really failure to me. You’ve learnt something quickly, and you move on.

What I don’t want is people sitting on good ideas because they’re worried about what happens if they don’t work. If every idea has to succeed, people will only ever suggest safe ones.

Personally, I’m probably more comfortable with getting things wrong than I used to be. The important bit is being honest about it, understanding what you’ve learnt, and not letting ego keep a bad idea alive.

AI, Innovation and Skills

How is AI changing the way you lead and make decisions?

For me, one of the most exciting things about AI is how quickly we can now act on an idea. We’ve always encouraged people at Mobsta to ask “what if?”, but now we can have that conversation and actually start testing the idea almost immediately.

I don’t think that makes human judgement less important. If anything, the opposite is true. As it becomes easier to make things, we’ll inevitably end up with a lot more stuff. Being able to work out what’s actually useful, interesting or worth pursuing becomes more valuable.

That’s the bit of AI that really interests me: giving imaginative people the ability to put their ideas into action faster, with greater clarity and more independence. From that standpoint, AI is an incredibly democratising tool. 

What’s your advice for aspiring media leaders?

Curiosity, judgement and imagination. Knowledge will obviously still matter, but we’re getting to a point where everyone can access an enormous amount of information almost instantly. If everyone can ask an AI system for an answer in seconds, knowing lots of things isn’t necessarily the differentiator it once was.

I think the people who stand out will be the ones asking interesting questions and making connections other people haven’t made. And you still need the imagination to look at everything in front of you and think, “What could we do with this?”

I’d add adaptability as well, although I’m not sure that’s even optional anymore. If you’re waiting for the industry to stop changing so you can catch up, you’ll be waiting forever.

What’s your advice for aspiring media leaders?

Don’t worry too much about having a perfectly mapped-out career. Mine certainly wasn’t. I studied archaeology, spent several years working for Customs & Excise searching people’s bags, moved into government marketing, then agencies, and eventually ran an adtech business. There was absolutely no masterplan behind that.

What I would say is: follow what makes you curious, work with people you can learn from, and don’t be afraid to take a sideways step if you think you’ll learn something from it.

And talk to people. Ask for help. I’ve become much more comfortable doing that as I’ve gotten older. I definitely didn’t have everything figured out before I started leading people, and I’m not sure anyone really does.

The Quick-fire Round

Which book would you make required reading for all media leaders?

Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. It reminds me that people can do extraordinary things when they have a horizon to chase. And that curiosity, courage, and willingness to step into the unknown can take you a long way, especially when you have an armoured bear in tow.

Which leader from TV, film, or literature inspires you most?

Cooper from Interstellar. He’s curious, brave and willing to make incredibly difficult decisions in pursuit of something bigger than himself. What I like most is that, underneath it all, he’s driven by love and responsibility rather than ambition.

What’s your go-to source for inspiration when you need it — work or otherwise?

Space. The sea. The mountains. Endless horizons. Space without thinking. That’s when the best ideas seep in.

Media lunch or media breakfast meeting, and why?

Lunch gives you that bit more time to get to know someone. Most good things in this industry come from relationships, and relationships need space.

Which media leader would you like to answer Leading Questions next?

Parry Jones. I like the way he thinks, and we need more people like him in the world. 

Leading Questions is published by The Media Leader every Friday.